Best Practice for skin maintenance

[meto]

Hello,

I'd like to ask you all, how do you cope with upgrading styles to newer versions? One must consider that every style needs to be modified more or less, but it's still a challenge. What approach do you suggest? Generating diff files from xml files should be sufficient, but is it THE WAY to do this right?

Best regards,

Maciek

[Ehren]

IPB has a skin difference feature (check the template merge center) which generates reports after each upgrade (3.1.3 > 3.1.4 for example). Otherwise for large scale upgrades like Gallery 4, I revert all of the files and reskin those pages from scratch.

[meto]

I was thinking of preparing linux deploy script consisting of some REGEX - sed (to change colors), and than apply some .diff file (f.e. header modifications) on a XML file.

I also wanted to try making style with parent as f.e Baisik and edit only child, but IPB stores whole files modified (f.e. ipb_styles.css) - so changing parent to new version of base style might loose much of new changes. Other problem with that is that you cant hide parent and keep visible child in IPB.